Unregistered, as a new member your first 5 posts will be subject to moderation.
So if your post is submitted successfully, but does not show up immediately, please be patient, as it may take some time for a moderator to approve it.
Please don't double post.

"Stereotyped beliefs and prejudiced attitudes exist not only because of social conditionaing and because they enable people to displace hostilities, but also as byproducts of normal thinking processes. Many stereotypes spring less from malice of the heart than from the machinery of the mind.

One way we simplify our environment is to categorize-to organize the world by clustering objects into groups (Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2000, 2001). A biologist classifies plants and animals. A human classifies people. Having done so, we think about them more easily. If persons in a group share some similarities-if most MENSA members are smart, and most basketball players are tall-knowing their group memberships can provide useful information with minimal effort (Macrae & others, 1994). Stereotypes sometimes offer "a beneficial ratio of infomration gained to effort expended" (Sherman & others, 1998). Stereotypes represent cognitive efficiency. They are energy-saving schemes for making speedy judgments and predicting how others will think and act. Thus, stereotypes and outgroup bias may, as Carlos David Navarrete and others (2010) have noted, "serve ultimate, evolutionary functions," by enabling our ancestors to cope and survive.

Experiments expose our spontaneous categorization of people by race. Much as we organize what is actually a color continuum into what we perceive as distinct colors, such as red, blue, and green, so our "discontinuous minds" (Dawkins, 1993) cannot resist categorizing people into groups.

****By itself, such categorization is not prejudice, but it does provide a foundation for prejudice.*****

Prejudice is distinct from stereotyping and discrimination. Social psychologists explore these distinctions and the different forms that prejudice assumes today.
Prejudice, stereotyping, discrimination, racism, sexism-the terms often overlap. Let's clarify them....

Prejudice-a preconceived negative judgment of a group and its individual members.
Stereotype-a belief about the personal attributes of a group of people. Stereotypes are sometimes overgeneralized, inaccurate, and resistant to new information. Sometimes, they are accurate.

Prejudice is an attitude. An attitude is a distinct combination of feelings, inclinations to act, and beliefs. It can be easily remembered as the ABC's of attitudes: Affect (feelings), Behavior tendency (inclination to act), and Cognition (beliefs). A prejudiced person may dislike those different from self and behave in a discriminatory manner, believing them ignorant or dangerous.
The negative evaluations that mark prejudice often are supported by negative beliefs, called stereotypes. To stereotype is to generalize. To simplify the world, we generalize: The British are reserved. Americans are outgoing. Professors are absent minded. Such generalizations can be more or less true (and are not always negative)....
An accurate stereotype can be desirable. We call it "sensitivity to diversity" or "cultural awareness in a multicultural world." To stereotype the British as more concerned about punctuality than Mexicans is to understand what to expect and how to get along with others in each culture. "Accuracy dominates bias," notes Lee Jussim (2012). "The social perception of glass (of people judging others) is about 90 percent full."
The 10 percent problem with stereotypes arises when they are overgeneralized or just plain wrong. To presume that most American welfare clients are African American is to overgeneralize, because it just isn't so. To presume that single people are less conscientious and more neurotic than partnered people, as did people in one German study, was wrong, because it just wasn't so (Greitemeyer, 2009). To presume that people with disabilities are incompetent and asexual, as did Oregonians in another study, misrepresents reality (Nario-Redmond, 2010). To stigmatize the obese as slow, lazy, and undisciplined is inaccurate (Puhl & Heuer, 2009, 2010). To presume that Muslims are terrorists, priests are pedophiles, and evangelicals hate homosexuals overgeneralizes from the worst examples of each....

Prejudice is a negative attitude. Discrimination is a negative behavior. Discrimination often has its source in prejudicial attitudes (Dovidio & others, 1996;Wagner & others, 2008)....

Racism and sexism are institutional practices that discriminate, even when there is no prejudicial intent...."

"Many stereotypes spring less from malice of the heart than from the machinery of the mind."

Well stated!

Re:

Quote:

"Stereotypes represent cognitive efficiency."

Oohhh, nice ... the brain doesn't necessarily pretend it knows everything, it just tells itself, "For argument's sake, let's say this (X or Y) is true." Then the brain has a starting point from which it can learn more if it gets the time and opportunity.

Re:

Quote:

"Prejudice is a negative attitude. Discrimination is a negative behavior."

Nicely-groomed layout of the distinction!

Anyway LR, thanks for the info and a chance to ponder some of our "hot-button words."

__________________Love means never having to say, "Put down that meat cleaver!"

Kevin, "So then maybe this someone shouldn't bother you at all with their pittance of knowledge, since it only frustrates you with their dysfunctional emptiness. Should they instead leave you in peace and say nothing about the subject? and to gain some actual useful knowledge, they should go live amongst the minority culture they'd like to speak of so that they won't offend anyone by talking out of their ass. Pardon the expression, but isn't that rather what you're getting at?"

Exactly.~

Kevin, "I mean people aren't seriously trying to tell me, are they, that African Americans aren't attending poly get-togethers because I and other bigots are calling them blacks? If I found the right "magic word" to call them, would they suddenly start attending the poly get-togethers that they were staying away from before?"

Here's an idea: how about calling them "people"?~

It's not about "what to call people", it's about just acknowledging that they are people and stop trying to separate every one based on the very surface of things such as skin color or the way they talk when you truly know nothing about them other than what you see or hear without talking to them.~

Whether I am purple,pink,green,blue,silver,red,brown,yellow, white, orange, black, gray,poka-dotted,stripped,a rainbow, or any thing: you truly do not know the kind of person I am until you actually try to get to know me.~

OK-There are large groups of people who may feel excluded. How can we include them.

There ya go.

For the purpose of progress on a broad scale-it's USELESS to omit descriptive labels.

In ONE ON ONE conversation it's unnecessary to use descriptive labels for obvious visual features.
BUT he wasn't one on one and wasn't able to access one on one conversations.

No one would even know wtf he was talking about if he started a thread on the topic without descriptives.

Ironically-I took the question to another venue-where I KNOW there are people who identify as racial minorities in the US. Because I CAN SEE THEIR PHOTOs.
I asked them PERSONALLY about discussing the topic and used the EXACT words that kdt used-as a quote.
They responded positively that they would love to communicate with him and appreciated his interest.

HMMMMMMM

Maybe the REAL issue is that people who DON'T WANT TO DISCUSS IT SHOULD JUST NOT DISCUSS IT and people who do want to-can.

OK-There are large groups of people who may feel excluded. How can we include them.

There ya go.

For the purpose of progress on a broad scale-it's USELESS to omit descriptive labels.

In ONE ON ONE conversation it's unnecessary to use descriptive labels for obvious visual features.
BUT he wasn't one on one and wasn't able to access one on one conversations.

No one would even know wtf he was talking about if he started a thread on the topic without descriptives.

Ironically-I took the question to another venue-where I KNOW there are people who identify as racial minorities in the US. Because I CAN SEE THEIR PHOTOs.
I asked them PERSONALLY about discussing the topic and used the EXACT words that kdt used-as a quote.
They responded positively that they would love to communicate with him and appreciated his interest.

HMMMMMMM

Maybe the REAL issue is that people who DON'T WANT TO DISCUSS IT SHOULD JUST NOT DISCUSS IT and people who do want to-can.

I'm sorry if you missed my point, it truly saddens me when some one is so blinded by their own perspective of things that they fail to see when some one else is trying to make an honest point.~

I didn't say to omit "descriptive" words, I just meant perhaps we all would be better off if all of us actually tried to take the time and make the effort to actually get know some one instead of assuming to know things about them that we couldn't have possibly known about them.~

Yes some people have "black" skin and some people have "brown" skin, but to assume that you know exactly what their mannerisms are, their ideologies are, what they like, what they don't like, how they were raised, etc. is extremely presumptuous on your part to say the least.~

Someone is saying they wonder why there isn't more interracial social activity in their area, inquiring if others have tackled similar problems and if they know how to increase it.

That isn't assuming that anyone knows anything about anyone else.
Furthermore, no one was assuming that "everyone with similar colored skin tones feels/acts/thinks the same way". In fact-several of us have noted quite the opposite, in a variety of examples.

BUT-there is some common denominators between how marginalized and discriminated people TEND to feel/act/react.
One of those things is that they tend to avoid socializing in groups where they fear it could happen again.

So addressing what possible actions/attitudes/behaviors may create THAT fear is actually quite logical and sensible.
And
Since minority groups (race/sex/sexual orientation/dis(ability)/culture) do tend to be marginalized and discriminated against frequently; then it makes sense to inquire about that as well.

MY point has been-that tackling "preferred" terminology on a world wide public message board is pretty much a waste of time-because there isn't a world wide preference.

Makes more sense to stick to addressing what types of behaviors tend to make people of minority groups that experience discrimination; avoid participating in groups and their activities.

Makes more sense to stick to addressing what types of behaviors tend to make people of minority groups that experience discrimination; avoid participating in groups and their activities.

Are you saying to not participate in behaviors and groups of discrimination?~

Because your wording here is confusing.~

If you are stating this: then I agree with you, that was my point all along: it's not so complicated, just stop trying to "classify" every one as one "Race" or "Another" because that is confusing and misleading with its' connection to "skin color or physical appearance": I make that distinction between "Race" and "Culture", "Race" is more connected to physical features of a group of people while "Culture" is more connected to the way of life of a group of people, these two are often connected but one does not always indict the other.~

Therefore this thread is NOT about "Race", it seems to me to be about "Culture".~

Some one who says they are "black" when they show no physical features of being such suggest that they are not talking about being of the "Race" "Black" but of the "Culture" "Black".~